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This is the first time anyone to the best of my knowledge has written up anything about fermenting apple juice/cider with something that isn’t cider/wine yeast.

My LHBS got their apple cider buckets in and I had to make cider. The recipe (I am working from a recipe since I have little cider experience) calls for diluting the cider to 10 gallons and throwing in two yeast packets. The tasting room at the homebrew store had some really good stuff. I am confident in this recipe. However, before we got into the recipe at the homebrew store, I had to do test runs. Test runs are like most other homebrew things where I take cheap glass jars (1 gallon) and put whatever I want in there. In this case, I prefer carlos rossi wines. My wife likes their blush and their sangria, and I like to ferment things in them. 1 gallon is also a good size since 1 gallon will scale to 5 easily. (There are scaling issues with some recipes, but generally unless you’re working with spices it’s mostly immaterial).

I got one gallon of standard issue apple juice, and 1 lbs of brown sugar. I heated the apple juice just enough to get the sugar to dissolve and put that in my carlos rossi jar. The carlos rossi wine jugs accept 6 or 6.5 bungs, I prefer 6.5 because it’s harder to push them into the neck. In one jug of delicious fortified apple juice I put in WLP001 (Cali Common) and in the other jug I put in WLP530 (Abbey Ale). Then I let them sit. The WLP001 sort of poked along (it’s known for this), but the WLP530 went off like a rocket. The WLP530 took a month to stop bubbling, the WLP001 was done in two weeks or so.

But, how does it taste?

The WLP001 is basically a bitch drink, it tastes like sweet cider, which is still very drinkable with no discernible alcohol taste. For something which is firmly session beer (4%), it’s quite drinkable. We also found mixing it with mead gives it really interesting notes. The Abbey Ale yeast managed to get it’s cider up to 8%, but it’s wonderfully dry, sharp stuff without being offensive. The abbey ale yeast managed to be fruity with just a touch of ester, it had a wonderful warm nose and a sharp taste on the tongue. Even for being still, it really came out well, and I would love to carbonate it.

That being said, the 10 gallons from the main batch is going to consume both my kegs if I keg it, but I plan on bottling as much as I can and possibly force carbing the rest. The main batch is fermented with wine yeast, but I almost wish I had done a five gallon batch with the abbey ale yeast and 5lbs brown sugar. Well, there’s always next year…

The current state of the kegerator: Orange soda, ginger beer, two ciders

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My wife got me a grain mill for our anniversary which is absolutely sweet. This is a three roller mill, which means that I can flake the oats of the apocalypse (or just get a nice crush). The problem is it’s a bit on the small side. This means it might take awhile to crush, but if I were hurting for time I wouldn’t be making my own beer. This is the roller mill from wheat grass mills (link). There’s no size reference on the website so I will give you a picture:

Blackberry included for scale. The blackberry did not go through the grinder. As you can see, this isn’t a huge system. That’s good though, it still needs to be hand cranked. For reference, it has three settings (small flake, large flake, flower) but these settings have a stop between them for giving us six total settings. To further make this hilarious, there’s really nothing stopping you from having stops in between there so long as you keep your hand on the adjustment knob.

How do we get more grain in there?

Make a funnel!

It comes with a wooden box which protects the plastic funnel for shipping, so I didn’t see a problem using that for something else. I was already at walmart for the dog food bin (air tight, 50lbs, or one grain bag) so what else could I do but buy a cheap bowl?

I took my vibratory cutter and plunge cut the bottom of the bowl. To get the right shape, take the wood it shipped in and trace it on the bottom of the bowl. Cut on the inside of these lines so that there’s a tight fit.

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I took a hiatus from brewing because I bought a house and had a kid. The one-two punch really put a dent in the hobbies. More on the point I couldn’t find half the fucking equipment for the longest time and there was one totally aborted batch somewhere in the middle due to the electric range not cutting it for brewing.

The previous electric range in the apartment was actually better, but did nothing to spread the heat so the eventual outcome was scorching on the brewpot until I figured out the flashing trick.

If you are interested in brewing on an electric range, the quick fix for hotspots is to buy a turkey fryer and never brew on your electric range again. If you absolutely insist on not owning a turkey fryer, then go to home depot, buy a piece of flashing (for a building) and so long as it’s not lead, it will work as a heat spreader. If you have an electric cooktop, it already has this. But seriously, buy a turkey fryer.

BEER
I’ve been getting hops off my Goldings rhizome for several years now and they just end up in the freezer. I think I killed it this year transplanting it into the garden, which sucks, but three years for a hop vine is actually a fairly long time. Point being, Goldings are supposed to be piney, sweet and floral. These were headed towards grassy. However, being an IPA, I decided to toss them in anyway for aroma. Hops tend to depend strongly on where they’re grown, so the “apartment hops” are going to be different from the “house hops” if they survived. More on the point hops don’t have very strong separation unless made in tightly controlled conditions, which tends to lead to hop of the month. I also grew chinooks, but it was never very good and finally expired, probably due to acidic hops needing more neutral soil than I could provide in a balcony pot.

The recipe was a basic IPA base, which is to say 16lbs pale and 1lbs caramel. Actually I made that 2lbs caramel and dropped the special B, pils and special roast because at .25 lbs, they don’t contribute anything. If it were black patent or chocolate, they would have made the beer roasty. Also my mash water is slightly on the high side since my thermometer didn’t survive the winter and I need to purchase another one. My best guess is that the water was 175F to 180F since the thermometer now has the column of color and then a thin line of it 5 degrees higher up. Fortunately they’re only $3. I also disagree with the 45 minute mash, generally longer is better when it comes to mash with the cutoff being when the mash drops to 160F or so it’s time to drain it before it really cools down and makes grain jello. My mash was roughly 1h15m.

I ended up using more make up water than I wanted due to me not paying as much attention as I should be and letting the mess boil over. Plus the late addition of hops usually means the brew kicks up. I need a bigger pot is really the root cause of this so I can keep a hard boil on while not worrying about what the hops are going to do to nucleation. This isn’t a huge problem with IPAs since the emphasis is on the hops and I had planned to use some of my own anyway.

The cooldown I decided to do entirely differently. Normally I’m a fan of the hot water bath or wort chiller, but now I’ve got a basement which hangs out at about 70F. A bit warm for lagering but perfect for just about anything else. The new plan was to simply put the beer in the carboy and put a plastic bag loosely over the top and let it sit overnight. The airlock here is a trap because the wort will suck in air as it cools. The air in the carboy is going to contract, the more it does so the more vacuum is built up in the fermenter and it’s perfectly capable of sucking all the water out of the airlock. The double-bubble airlocks really shine here because it works both ways. If the water is below the half way mark, it’ll keep the nastiness out. 3 pieces will pull the water right into your beer. So, if you have a double-bubble, use that if you’re not going to chill the beer ahead of time. It’s not the best filter, but it’s better than the bag. My double-bubble went AWOL in the move, hence the bag. Water isn’t the best filter, but as the K5 Bong Squad will tell you, it does filter whatever bubbles through it to some extent.

Dry hopping – I put in hop flowers and I really should have shredded them before doing it. Since they’re frozen, they’re plenty crumbly. It made a real mess to clean out of the fermenter. Plus they float. Not only do you lose the trub on the bottom but you lose the beer on top now that it’s filled with hops. I think I only lost four bottles out of what I expected to get but that’s four less bottles to drink. There’s a reason why those wine filters are so popular in the brewing community, and this is the reason.

Yeast – I double-pitch now because I’m paranoid that the long cooldown period will let things get into the beer I don’t want. Buying two yeast packets instead of one is cheap insurance.

A week later and the beer hadn’t settled, so I let it sit for two weeks and some change and things had improved. Also make a mental note to buy a keg kit. Actually washing out two cases of bottles, sterilizing them, and then washing them out again is crap. Not that kegs are easier to clean but they’re certainly better than 50 bottles. The beer is good.

MEAD
My wife eventually got the beer envy and said “Lets try making mead!” Note that we still have that lonely bottle in the basement from beeguy via Rusty, I keep saying we should drink it and she keeps coming up with reasons why not. I think it’s getting on four years old now. One of these days I swear it’s going to grow wings and fly away.

Now, BEERLAB 2021 is already setup to do wine because my wife thinks Arbor Mist is good wine. Then, just because Arbor Mist wasn’t shitty enough, there’s a brand of wine kit called Harbor Mist which is absolutely fucking foul. Any wine which requires you to add “concentrated watermelon flavor” to the mix – probably crap. The two year old bottles are actually passable because that shit gets toned down but no-one is going to mistake it for wine. We’ve had OK luck foisting it on people as wine coolers. Also a note on better bottles versus glass. Better bottles, despite all claims, pick up the hop smell. If you use a better bottle for beer, you cannot use it for wine. I have been playing with the idea of adding noble hops to wine or fermenting wine in a beer bucket if the nose is right, but I want to hear from more winemakers before committing to it. I’ve had the better bottles for a few years so they’ve got some wear on them. I also have a glass carboy and I prefer to use that.

Anyway, mead is interesting. The Northern Brewer will ship just about anything for $7.99. While it’s not a huge savings for one kit, if you order two it’s a steal. In fact they have an extremely nice selection of mead kits so I just picked a beer kit (petit saison) and we got them both. Of course, she got sweet mead and let me tell you it lives up to it’s name. The mead kit comes with energy mix, whatever that is, and three more small satchels of the same. It also comes with the standard overpitch of yeast. Of course it also comes with a metric ton of basswood honey.

Now when I link to that, it’s so you can see the color and get some tasting notes. Be that as it may, this honey from northern brewer was raw. It was slightly darker than that, strong smelling, had shit floating in there to the point of being opaque and it had a layer of stuff on the bottom. NB sends a note with it – “it’s normal for the honey to be opaque since this is brewing honey, not table honey”. OK maybe it’s a UK thing, but I wasn’t aware there was “table honey”. The instructions said it would clarify when it was warmed, which to their credit it mostly did but I’m still not sure you would want to eat it straight from the bottle. There were no mummified bees present in it’s golden depths.

Now, if this were wine there would be warming, a brief boiling period, etc. Mead is a lot more raw than wine and the process is dead simple: Warm bottles in a hot water bath, boil some water. Stir in big yeast nutrient phial in boiled water and add yeast. Fill fermenter half way with warm water. Pour in honey. Top up. Done.

I changed this a bit.

I’m in the camp that the yeast should be re-hydrated with whatever you’re going to put them in. Reason being that the yeast are sensitive to temperature and they are strongly sensitive to Ph. I could have saved some honey and put that in the water but the easiest way of doing it is to toss the yeast straight way into the fermenter. Since we already have to stir up the honey and we need to stir in the yeast food, it only makes sense to put the yeast in the must (unfermented wine-product) and stir and stir again. I did not observe any adverse effects.

The honey at this point was quite pretty and golden.

The next day – it stank. To make it more fun, there’s three additions of yeast food 24 hours apart. If it stinks now, you can bet that it would stink for subsequent feedings. Trust me, it did. It only got worse. Every time we fed it for the next three days it smelled like all sorts of strange smells. Sulphur and overripe apples abound. I was actually getting worried it had spoiled, except every time we gently stirred it we got CO2 out so I knew the yeast was working properly. Fortunately we have a radon mitigation system in the basement and it’s fairly flowy so most of it was going out the top of the house. I’d be lying if I didn’t say it was unique. Once you smell it you notice it’s everywhere.

A week later I went downstairs for something unrelated and noticed it was cloudy and highlighter yellow. I was starting to fear the worst so I got out the trusty wine spoon and gave it a quick cleaning. I stick it in there and KABOOM. All the suspended CO2 came out, it looked like soda. Six gallons of highlighter yellow mountain dew. I decided to lick the spoon and it was delicious. Honey, apples, flowers and sugar. Oh this is going to be dangerous. Yes it is.

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Mom always said “You catch more flies with honey” but I always pointed out she beat the living hell out of me the day I tried squirting honey onto a fly for the purposes of safely depositing it outside the house.

I had written the PLCB over the Raid the day I saw it on philly.com.

Basically, I wrote them a nastygram.

In case you’re not familiar with PA law, it’s stupidly draconian. The PLCB (Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board) is a bunch of pricks who use excuses like “bulk buying brings you lower prices”. In actuality since the liquor in the state is effectively taxed at 32%, basement hooch to high end wine is accounted for to the bottle.

And god help you if you’re drinking high end wine, there’s no wine bars in PA because splitting a bottle is technically illegal.

No-one in their right mind believes this was a “citizen complaint”. PA has long since had possibly the worst licensing and distribution system of any state I’d have the pleasure of visiting, and the PLCB is anything but a monopoly. As such no-one believes that any citizen would have both the insight and understanding of how this draconian establishment works enough to report “improperly licensed” beer. More on the point I sincerely doubt given the quality of the average state trooper or PLCB employees language skills that anyone in either of those two establishments would be able to read the barrels or beer names, most of which would be labeled in Belgian German or Flemish.

Even more on the point – it’s been legal for tobacconists to have “house blends” of tobacco, but in reality these tobacconists are selling tobacco purchased under another name. Yet no-one walks into Grandpa’s tobacco shop with state troopers armed to the teeth and says “OH YOUR TOBACCO IS MISLABELED”.

I will also submit a CONTACT THE GOVERNOR form and CC him.

As a result of this action, I’ve created a sign up sheet in my neighborhood to hold a workshop this weekend. This weekend I will teach approximately 17 people to make their own beer.

Sincerely,
Joshua Knarr

Actually the homebrew thing wasn’t nearly that popular, and it’s only got three people. But it’s good to put the fire under them. Also of note, tobacco is regulated similarly to liquor, but given the “declining popularity” the state has decided to tax the living shit out of it while not caring where it comes from. For those really not from the area, PA is the “tax state” for goods, Delaware is impossible to live in since they’re the “tax state” for paychecks, and NJ typically taxes the living hell out of tobacco. As such, we go to NJ for our gas, buy our tobacco in PA, and buy merchandise in Delaware, the home of “tax free shopping” (and god help you if the staties see you crossing state lines with a TV on your roof).

Anyway.

Here’s the letter I got back:

Mr. Knarr,

Please be advised that it is the Pennsylvania State Police, Bureau of Liquor Control Enforcement, and not the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board, which enforces the liquor laws in Pennsylvania. Therefore, your e-mail is being forwarded to them for review. Thank you.

OK so lets talk to those guys. I shot them the same mail and….

This is in response to your inquiry regarding the recent raids of three Philadelphia-area bars, conducted by the Pennsylvania State Police, Bureau of Liquor Control Enforcement (“BLCE”), in which the PSP, BLCE apparently confiscated beers that may or may not have been properly registered for sale in Pennsylvania.

The raids in question were conducted by the PSP, BLCE, not the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board(“Board”). The officers involved are employed by the PSP, BLCE and not the Board. The Board and the BLCE are two distinct agencies. Therefore, your inquires should be directed to the PSP, BLCE Harrisburg Headquarters. Their contact number is 717-540-7410.

Ah yes, the great circle jerk of responsibility continues unabated. (Note that the state police and governor simply said “Thank you for contacting us” and included no other response).

No-one in their right mind believes this was a “citizen complaint”. PA has long since had possibly the worst licensing and distribution system of any state I’d have the pleasure of visiting, and the PLCB is anything but a monopoly. As such no-one believes that any citizen would have both the insight and understanding of how this draconian establishment works enough to report “improperly licensed” beer. More on the point I sincerely doubt given the quality of the average state trooper or PLCB employees language skills that anyone in either of those two establishments would be able to read the barrels or beer names, most of which would be labeled in Belgian German or Flemish.

Even more on the point – it’s been legal for tobacconists to have “house blends” of tobacco, but in reality these tobacconists are selling tobacco purchased under another name. Yet no-one walks into Grandpa’s tobacco shop with state troopers armed to the teeth and says “OH YOUR TOBACCO IS MISLABELED”.

I will also submit a CONTACT THE GOVERNOR form and CC him.

As a result of this action, I’ve created a sign up sheet in my neighborhood to hold a workshop this weekend. This weekend I will teach approximately 17 people to make their own beer.

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I thought it was just me at first, but then I tried some of my all grain lager bock and realized it wasn’t.

Commercial beers are getting chewier, and it’s not just the styles you think should be chewier this time of year. Sure, your BMC beer (bud, miller, coors) is the same recipe, but the beers like Lord Chesterfield from Yuengling? They’re actually chewier (heavier on the pallete) than they are in the summertime. Save a bottle of your favorite beer this winter and drink it during the hot days of summer after having one “regular” version of it and compare.

That being said, my Local Homebrew Store has jacked up prices so badly it’s worth ordering from Northern Brewer. If I had the money to brew anyway.